I was not a strict follower of religion. Yet, I escorted someone to a live sermon on epics in Chennai one day. Surprisingly, I turned myself into a thorough believer. From then on, I am hooked on to God. During another trip outside my state, I was flying to Mangaluru with a changeover in Bengaluru. Luckily the first flight was bigger and flew higher, I supposed. Looking out from the window seat, I was praying to God under my breath. The man in the next seat touched my arm reassuringly.
He was trying to calm me down in a foreign tongue. All he appeared to say was that there was no real need for me to be alarmed about the ride as we were cruising above the level of the clouds, i.e. at higher altitudes. After I finished saying my prayers, I told him, now in English, my own reason for praying loudly at much higher altitudes. I revealed a secret to him that by saying prayers from there in the window seat, one could attain salvation or gain good karma with little effort due to proximity to God.
Back to my Chennai prologue, the pundit (revered greatly for his erudition) adumbrated in his long discourse how God might not come down from the Heavens every time we solicit His help, like our political emissaries coming down from Delhi to mediate in troubled waters at the behest of local satraps. I remembered many do-gooders coming to my succour at zero hours in my career even without so much insistence. It is all in one’s karma again.
For some, mere sighting of a temple would solve their problems. In the Chennai discourse, I imagined seeing the avatar of Vishnu Himself in a small child next to me doing antics when the pundit explained about the ‘little’ Vaman’s avatar. It was a sheer joy to look at this Vaman, as described by the eloquent pundit while unravelling His various grand epithets straight from the original Bhagavatam.
At the end of the program, I realised what life would be without a dedicated angle or line in one’s path of faith towards the Supreme Lord. In my onward journey, I watched those monsoon clouds at great lengths and at great heights over the Western Ghats. I realised the immensity of nature in God’s creation. I was without my usual food for six long days after my Chennai jaunt. Spiritual line aside, I think Goddess Annapurna resides only back home in the wife’s sambar and curd rice.